Forget what the rest of the world says, Santa Claus is Canadian and he calls the North Pole home

Conservative MP and parliamentary secretary Paul Calandra was playing politics while playing on a controversial Christmas theme when he invoked Santa Claus during Question Period in the House of Commons this week, using the jolly old soul to change the subject at hand — the Mike Duffy scandal — and bash Liberal leader Justin Trudeau over the head for the less-than-assertive assertion that Canada’s Arctic sovereignty was a matter best left to the oceanographers and scientists to decide.

“All of a sudden the Liberals are suggesting that Santa Claus is no longer Canadian and that they would abandon the North Pole and abandon Santa Claus,” Mr. Calandra said.

It was an absurd moment, and yet, within it, lurked a poignant consideration — with potentially serious international implications. Since, if Mr. Calandra is indeed correct, and Santa is indeed Canadian — and let’s face it — the guy loves winter, having a nip or two before bedtime, lives in the North Pole and packs on the pounds during December and surely looks to be Canadian — then that means Santa can’t be anything else.

Which means he isn’t American. Which means Mr. Calandra could have a situation on his hands next time he visits Alaska.

“Santa Claus lives here,” says Nicole Blizinski, from Santa Claus House, located at 101 St. Nicholas Drive, North Pole, Alaska. “There are a variety of St. Nicks all over the world, and they all carry with them the embodiment of Christmas, but Santa Claus lives here — in the North Pole of Alaska.”

There is even a 40-foot statue of Santa outside of Santa’s alleged Alaskan residence, though proof of said residence was greatly diminished Wednesday during Senate confirmation hearings in Washington, D.C., over Bruce Heyman’s proposed appointment as the next U.S. ambassador to Canada. Mr. Heyman’s said — seriously, he did — that Santa wasn’t American or Canadian, but a citizen of the world and safeguarded by NORAD, the joint Canadian-American air defence initiative.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, Christmas stockings, or whatever their equivalent, are being hung by the chimney with care, including in Turkey.

I remember being in disbelief that these Finns actually thought Santa Claus was Finnish

“The Turks claim that the former St Nicholas [from which the modern name Santa Claus derives] of Myra in modern Turkey remains one of theirs,” Jeremy Seal, author of Nicholas: The Epic Journey from Saint to Santa Claus, says from his home in Bath, England.

“The Canadian claim is not only a comparatively recent one — Santa Claus was not associated with the high latitudes until the mid-19th century — but it’s also highly contentious, at least on this side of the pond where we tend to think of him as coming from Lapland in Scandinavia.”

Lapland would be northern Finland. Megan Leslie, the NDP MP from Halifax, is of Finnish stock, a daughter of immigrants. She grew up in a northwestern Ontario community rife with Finns and beholden to the belief that Santa’s real name was “Joulupukki.”

“Answering where Santa is from is a really delicate question for a child of Finnish immigrants,” she says. “I went to Finland for a year of university, and people would ask me if I was going to see Santa Claus. And I remember being in disbelief that these Finns actually thought Santa Claus was Finnish.

“Then I went to Santa Claus’ village up in Rovaniemi [Lapland]. When you go to see Santa’s village in Finland you actually go to the Arctic Circle, and everybody goes. They take their kids. Whereas our Santa’s village is, where, Cambridge, Ont., or something?

“Santa’s village in Rovaniemi was quite compelling. It tugged at my heartstrings, my Finnish roots. So when I came back to Canada I made the decision that there is a high probability that Santa Claus is Finnish. I converted.”

Santa, one could argue, should not be pinned down to a particular country. The man rides a sleigh, after all, pulled aloft by flying reindeer. He is magical. But then even magicians carry passports in the modern age. No. Santa has a home. Here. In Canada, in the North Pole, where the snow never melts and where a jolly old fellow shares a hearth with Mrs. Claus, a women’s hockey player from Prince Albert, Sask.